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It was a kiss from the past.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Kiss
Kissing
Past

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No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.
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I do my best work under pressure, so I’ll nick an artery, and my husband isn’t allowed to stanch the bleeding till I’ve banged out a chapter.
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Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.
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The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential.
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Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don't join fashionable 'schools of thought.' Read everything.
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I always remind myself that [ Jean-Paul] Sartre and [Simone] de Beauvoir didn't have children. And when you don't have children, it might be easier to believe that the child doesn't come with something.
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I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury.
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I'm not sure if you're the person for me any more.
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It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.
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There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail.
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... don't ever underestimate people, don't ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own... Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt.
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Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.
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Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
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...They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
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You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.
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Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]
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It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don't look more free, they just look more owned.
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It has historically been a comfort for the bourgeois and that you can read the most extreme books and not change. You can read A Christmas Carol and not change in any way.
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When I see my friends engaging in a Twitter war for an afternoon, I think that would destroy me for a month.
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Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.
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